Is Marvel dying?

The Spectator ^ | 13 Feb 2024 | Ella Dorn

[Rummyfan]

Martin Scorsese thinks Marvel films aren’t cinema. “The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes,” he wrote in a New York Times article in 2019, written after a wave of backlash from superhero fans and directors alike. Earlier that year, Marvel’s three-hour blockbuster Avengers: Endgame had garnered over $2.7 billion. For a while it was the highest-grossing film ever made. People turned up to see it in spandex catsuits. You couldn’t move for replica infinity stones. Some theaters, eager to fill the demand, screened the film over and over for seventy-two straight hours.

Now everything’s coming up Scorsese. The Marvel strongmen have fallen from the sky and landed, cape-first, onto concrete. Last year’s The Marvels, a group outing of female superheroes, made a profit of only $47 million on its $200 million budget — the lowest box-office takeaway of any Marvel film. The film blog Deadline blames Disney+ streaming services. In its on-demand delivery of superhero “content,” it does away with most of the magic of going to the movies. Fair enough. But there are other dimensions to the decline.

I survey friends who like superhero films, only to find they’ve all gone off Marvel films. One says she hasn’t seen a Marvel film in nearly six years because the plots are too complicated. All of the heroes operate in the same universe: you have to have watched every Marvel release of the last decade to understand whatever they put out next. Another used to watch the films regularly but found that the different fight scenes started to merge into each other. Some pin the decline to the birth of Disney+ and others to the release of Endgame....

[Rummyfan]

It's dead. It died of a combination of woke-ism and a dearth of new ideas and interesting characters. Even my friends and family who were big MCU fans have been totally turned off the last several years.

[Rummyfan]

And:

WandaVision is full of echoes, allusions, callbacks, and Easter eggs from old TV sitcoms and previous Marvel shows, creating a puzzle for superfans by entangling them in the increasingly intricate Marvel maze, all of which is fine. But when Black Widow was released, requiring The Washington Post to run a piece entitled, “The 7 Marvel Movies You Should See Before Black Widow,” the danger is that those who merely want to watch, not research a PhD in MCU studies, are left out in the cold. Ditto Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. For those studying for their MCU exams, The New York Times recommended rewatching five films to fully understand it.

[dfwgator]

I hope so.

[Skwor]

Yep, the politics of woke and utter lack of talent has destroyed a money printing franchise. All done because Bob Igor wanted to shove wokism down peoples throats instead of profits for Disney.

[BigEdLB]

Rocket says, “I aint dead yet…

[Clemenza]

I hope so - comic book movies are sooo 2008.

[Wallace T.]

Woke-ism is a partial explanation for the decline of Marvel and Disney for that matter. However, plenty of media creations have gone full cycle well before the rise of PC and woke ideologies. Popular TV series in the last century went through cycles and gradually lost their audience, which moved on to other entertainment. At one time, Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray Leonard, Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali, Rocky Graziano, and others were as well known as the top tier of baseball and football stars. Even with white heterosexual heroes, the comic book heroes would have faded away, though perhaps more slowly.

[moviefan8]

Avengers: Endgame was the perfect ending.

[Brian Griffin]

“$2.7 billion”

would cover the cost of about a dozen flops.

[DouglasKC]

Yeah, once the multiverses stuff starts happening it’s hard to keep track of players. And once they start going all woke it’s over.

On the other hand Scorcese has one kind of movie as well...gangsters. So I’m not sure he should be talking about lack of variety by film makers.

[Pox]

Scorsese’s opinion is his own. Yes, Marvel is dying, but not due to Scorsese’s and the authors reasoning.

Woke BS is killing it. Slowly at first, and then suddenly after Endgame. Well, kind of during Endgame as well. Aside for their retarded focus on female characters, they did extremely stupid moves like turning The Hulk into a freaking pussy in the last couple of movies.

There’s more, but no point in rehashing the stupidity.

[BipolarBob]

gangster movies? Hugo? The last Temptation of Christ? Bringing out the Dead?

[Zuriel]

A raccoon superhero? Might as well be. It’s all utter silliness.

The only real ‘superhero’ was the old batman tv show. It showed how ridiculous the whole idea is, and made great comedy out of it.

[TexasFreeper2009]

they decide work messaging was more important than entertainment. In addition to that the effects and costumes are so bad these movies look like a typical power rangers TV episode.

[MinorityRepublican]

They had a nice run. But they should have wrapped it up and called it a day after they made the Avengers. And not make any new movies for 20 years.

Just because you can make a movie every year, doesn't mean you should.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The only one of them I ever liked was Iron Man, and that was because of Robert Downey, Jr.

Have never been able to watch more than five minutes of any of the others.

[catnipman]

““The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes,””

as Ronald Reagan might have said: “If you’ve seen one superhero movie, you’ve seen ‘em all” ...

[Jonty30]

Wokeism is the biggest one, imo.

The second biggest one is that screenwriters are just crap at their jobs. They can’t write movies like they used to. You only have to look at movies in the 1970’s and 80’s and today. Back then, most movies were pretty good. There were a few duds, but you weren’t wasting your dollar going to see most movies.

Other options is another factor. Why pay $30/ticket, including conccessions, when I can stay home for a subscription price.

Streaming was a huge mistake by studios, imo. With cable, I had everything for one price and a couple of dollars more if I wanted a specialty channel. Now, I have to pay $20/channel to see their content. Not just science fiction, for example, but Star Trek or Star Wars. If I want to see both Star Trek and Star Wars, I have to pay $20 each to do both. I’m not going to do that. There is not enough material in either universe to make it worth my while.

[Dr. Sivana]

Yeah, once the multiverses stuff starts happening it’s hard to keep track of players.

The multi-verse started out as a way to reconcile having both Golden Age and Silver Age DC heroes. Then the number of storied earths started multiply . . . Earth-3, Earth-S, Earth-Prime, Earth-X, etc. "Crisis on Infinite Earths" was a way to pare down the insane complexity created by 45 years of superhero comic books.

It might have worked, too, except that Warner/DC didn't have the discipline to leave the dead alone. Once they brought back Barry Allen Flash, and Supergirl, etc., that means the dead don't stay dead. Yes, the dead had been brought back before (e.g. Lightning Lad), but once they moved from the old DC line that if you Time Travel, you CANNOT change the past to the new line of generating new time lines and new multi-verses (DC and Marvel share this, and DC's violation of the old rule goes to the FIRST Superman movie in the '70s), then there is no stake in ANYthing. NO ONE can reliably stay dead. It might take Dr. Fate or the Phantom Stranger or Deadman or the Guardians of the Universe from Oa, but if Barry Allen gets killed, he comes back. If Supergirl gets killed, she comes back. Heck, even if the whole earth blows up, that can all be brought back.

I disagree with Scorsese. At their best comic book heroes can make great stories in the same way that their inspiration, Greek and Roman Mythology can. I suppose Scorsese would not consider "The Thin Man" or "Blondie Finds a Way" to be cinema, either. They are.

But DC and Marvel have painted themselves into a corner, and viewers will NOT be impressed if they make up new laws of magic or physics or abilities by Doctors Strange and Fate to place an open window next to the corner. That is a cheat, and considered a dramatic flaw. In the ancient plays of the Romans and Greeks, this was often the "Deus ex Machina" ending, and it is generally unsatisfying.

[mass55th]

Oversaturation. Same thing they’ve done with alphabet characters, racially diversity couples and racially diverse characters in shows and movies...especially period dramas. Everyone knows Anne Boleyn was white, but the British had to turn her into a black woman. Utterly ridiculous.